this is something that dawned on me a few days ago. i was stepping out of the shower, and after drying off i bent and flipped my head to wrap a towel around it. i have recently gotten over an ear infection in which i had debilitating vertigo, and though it is pretty much ok now i will still occasionally get dizzy when i make sudden movements like this.

anyhow, it took everything i had to catch myself and not fall... nothing too serious. but then i started to wonder - what if i had fallen and hit my head... these accidents happen quite frequently. that so much wasn't the part that bothered me -- i then started to realize that if it happened, i could very easily be laying there for over a week or so before anyone would even notice i was gone. i have family, but they live out of town and do not keep in touch on a regular basis. the very few friends i have are the same --- sporadic conversations. i had taken a few vacation days from work, so until i was supposed to be back there no one would have any idea anything was wrong. and i could probably be missing from work very several days before they would actually make more of an effort than a couple of phone calls....

then i started thinking about this episode of sex & the city, where miranda found out the woman who previously owned her apartment died in an accident similar to the one i just described --- by the time anyone checked on her, half of her face was eaten by her cat. miranda then starting worrying about the same thing, and started over feeding her cat.

i have never really felt loneliness until that moment --- or at least not to this degree.